1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus and, in particular, to management of a file.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, an apparatus for recording and reproducing a moving image signal on and from a random-accessible recording medium such as a hard disk (HDD) or a flash memory has come into wide use. The apparatus for recording and reproducing a moving image signal on and from a random-access recording medium has an advantage over a conventional apparatus for recording and reproducing a moving image signal on and from a sequential-access recording medium such as a tape in that it is easy to perform an editing work such as deleting and moving a recorded moving image.
In the apparatus for recording and reproducing a moving image signal on and from the random-access recording medium, a moving image recorded on the recording medium is managed as a file according to a determined file system. A method for using a folder to store and manage a plurality of files is discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-131698.
It is difficult to identify an order of reproducing a moving image file thus recorded on a recording medium from configuration of a file or a folder. For this reason, information for identifying the order of reproduction is recorded. The order of reproducing the moving image file can be identified by the information for identifying the order of reproduction. Secure digital (SD)-Video standards have been known for recording a moving image on a secure digital (SD) memory card, which is one of random-access recording media.
In the SD-Video standards, a media object data (MOD) file including a moving image data and a media object information (MOI) file including time information of the moving image data are recorded. The MOD file is stored and managed in a folder and program information (PRG_INFO) file is recorded to manage the folder storing the MOD file. A program manager (PRG_MGR) file is recorded to manage each file recorded according to the SD-Video standards.
Also in the SD-Video standards, the moving image file (MOD file) is stored and managed in a folder (stream folder). In the SD-Video standards, an order of reproducing the folder and an order of reproducing the moving image file in the folder are specified to determine an order of reproducing a recorded moving image. The order of reproducing the folder is described in the PRG_MGR file. The order of reproducing the moving image file in the folder is described in the PRG_INFO file.
In the SD-Video standards, however, the order of reproducing the moving image file cannot be specified across the different folders. Accordingly, the degree of freedom is not high in a case of changing the order of reproduction by means of editing. For example, in the SD-Video standards, a moving image file cannot be reproduced in such order that the moving image file stored in one of two folders is reproduced, then the moving image file stored in the other folder is reproduced, and again the moving image file stored in the one folder is reproduced.
In standards that manage contents such as recorded moving images as a file, an upper limit on a number of files which can be stored in one folder is generally set. Therefore, a new moving image file cannot be stored in the folder which has already stored moving image files to the upper limit.
For example, if a moving image file is divided into two files, a number of moving image files to be recorded is increased by one. However, if a moving image file cannot be newly stored in the folder in which an original moving image file is stored, one of two image files created by division is stored in a folder different from the folder storing the original moving image file.
As described above, in the SD-Video standards, the order of reproducing the moving image file cannot be specified across the different folders, so that two moving image files created by division may not be continuously reproduced.